She sat by the pool, her hair cascading by her side; her demeanor of chagrin and petulance. He had left and there was nothing to be. The sun played truant just as her fleeting thoughts wandered around aimlessly. The glistening aura around her invited the butterflies gently swooping down to catch a glimpse.

Silent footsteps in the corridors of her mind ; now a distant shadow flitting away into the darkness. She stared at the infinity pool wondering why they called it so. Was it timeless as her memories were?

Daring her, Serenading her, beguiling with its charm- letting her surrender when she couldn’t .

A white sheet of paper. No letters scribbled in. No words and no sentences. No periods to worry about to end it and no commas, no dashes and dots. Just blank and fresh as the blue sky, vast and bright. Not a single wayward cloud. I lifted the paper and smelt it. The fragrance of words had long evaporated leaving behind the residues of a mind that ceased gradually.

Pithy thoughts and loving glances dissipated in the morning sun. What was left the inviting aroma of a tomorrow? Cogent and coherent? Serene thoughts that override the chariots of wayward words and vanquished dreams spilling onto its whiteness.

No whip that rouses or salimonious broodings held and fastened. Infinite peace and then some rest. I walk a few steps. I turn around knowing it will draw me in yet again. Unknown ties of mind. I feel the air breaking. I feel the knots tied up and laced in burgundy. I feel it all and I walk knowing it vaporizes. As much as the sun rises it sets and spreads its somnambulistic web. I am caught in its labrynth and trapped.

As I emerge, I am unstuck. Life beckons. Hasn’t it been long and enduring? Movement and metastasis of thoughts warranted, riding in parallel directions. Not meeting but slumbering through. I will make it. Haven’t I before?

I swivel in my chair. I put the pen back. The ink dries up and the point glistens menacingly. I look away. I am not lured by my pen anymore. I am infallible or so I think. I walk away and the page stays empty for now. Maybe later or much later the restoration and reconstruction may begin again. Until then blank is what it is…

I glance out of the window and what I see is sheer poetry from nature, beckoning every weary soul into her folds. A ray of light, a cosmic connection, a path unfolding for silent footsteps to follow through with her- music wafting in to fill my veins with such unexplainable mirth and bliss. I become one with her, lost in her embrace.

Nature holds me together and I reach out for her hands to lead me through the terrains of life, climbing over rocks and jumping over little waterfalls and creeks. Seeing my reflection often, smiling and waving, keeping me bound to deep brown earth. The sky yonder, inviting with her open arms telling me to take a leap of faith and become one with her boundless beauty and wholesomeness; relinquishing all ties with the earth. To fly like a bird and feel the winds carrying me like a feather…

I was ruminating with a cup of Joe in hand and couldn’t help existential questions flooding my mind as they usually do when I have nothing else to think about but have a hundred things on hand to do. I figured why fight thoughts when they come knocking on my head. The one that came rendering me baffled was about ‘experiences and how it molds people into the character that they are’. The old adage is ‘experience makes man wiser’ and that led me to willingly snowball the question answer-session and war of words going in my head.

If experience makes man wiser aren’t all elderly people and octo/septuagenarians the wisest of the lot with halos around their head? Couldn’t they be classified as humans who are highly evolved since they have so many experiences in life- that they must be brimming with answers? Although some very experienced people are as retrogressive in their thinking, reactions and behavior akin to a child learning to walk for the first time and stand out counter-intuitive to that theory but then we know every rule has exceptions.

A child falls, gets up and walks again and again until it perfects the art of walking. Boys slam themselves against the walls until they learn eventually that it does hurt.

That was until I read this saying by Friedrich Nietzsche

“Character is determined more by lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.”

Now this one threw me in a loop but after I got down to the business of rationalizing it I realized he sure has a point. Sometimes our reactions without experience are the purest and momentous, without any prior Pavlovian concepts buried in our head that surface to elicit a response as ordained.

Although I must confess I prefer the saying by some anonymous person:

Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it.

Having been through several interesting experiences in the real world that could potentially be classified basing on their level of impact on my psyche right from my childhood I find this whole subject interesting. Strangely, I am at peace with every one of them be it good or bad and has not made me bitter about anything. On the contrary I have found that experiences have heightened my sensitivity to issues and an understanding of its dissections. So I sit back watching when a flurry of activity unfurls in front of me. The outcome sometimes turning tragic or sometimes escalating or sometimes … just plain amusing, keeping me enthralled in the journey of life.

Experiences are an amalgamation of disparate situations connected in a chain-link of memories bookmarked for future references. A feeling of ‘been there, done that’ that gives a degree of comfort and a sixth sense that propels one forward while making decisions or observing life, people, incidents, also providing an insight into another person’s plight and empathizing for good measure. A person’s character comes through not with ease but through experiences that strengthen the soul and clears the vision to lead us in the direction of achievements. A quiet strength that gets added on like a layer over a person, a RAM card that can be dug into for future references, as and when needed.

Then there is this aspect about how we go on testing our limits and pushing the envelope as much as possible. May be most of us are not above absolvation to this phenomenon with regard to man and his achievements. An innate desire to see how tensile can elastic get before it snaps or how long can we run before we drop dead, or how high can we climb before the oxygen gets so rarefied that we are left out of breath. A constant need to prove our worth in the world which leads me to the question of why the need to display our innate capacities and achievements always? The need to showcase and then feel duly acknowledged of our presence in the real world is quite intriguing to me. Of course virtual world is a whole different story and I am not venturing to dissect it since it is a vast unknown, that which I know very little about.

When one is contented with oneself and has already carved a niche in the world, in mankind, with respect to career, achievements, place in society the ever saturating need one has, to fulfill another dream, another wish, another mountain to climb, another bling-bling to add to our mantelpiece – egging one on, finally culminating in some kind of rat race with one self more than with the rest of the world is another interesting observation oftentimes leading me to conclude that we humans are a funny lot indeed!

But of course, whatever ticks the clock of life for each one of us.

I would think that self-competition is good as it brings the better, the faster, and the stronger in us and make a better self of us, constantly seeking a measuring stick and berating oneself for falling short of one’s own capacities. On second thoughts it could be a self-realization that there might be untapped hidden potentials that could be drilled into, to assure oneself that nothing need go wasted in this life with regard to our abilities and who best to realize it than ourselves.

You are walking down the street. There’s a man doubled over, lying face down on the ground. His few belongings are scattered all around him. He is unable to get up. You are rushing to work. You see this sight before you. You are trying to look at it from your peripheral vision. You don’t want to stop the smooth strides taking you to your work. There will be someone behind you who will take care of the fallen person, you think.

You move on. You walk a few blocks then you stop dead in your tracks.

‘What is wrong with me’, you ask. Why didn’t I stop for this person? What if the few precious moments that elapsed caused a life or death situation for him. You turn around and walk with even quicker strides, your conscience pricking even more. You reach the same spot but find the person is no longer there. You don’t know what happened! Did someone take care off him? Did someone rush him to a hospital? You walk away albeit slowly. You do care! You took more than a moment to realize it and act on it.

You are jogging in the park. The crisp morning air is rejuvenating. You are calm, happy and satisfied with whatever life offered you. You are running at a steady pace inhaling the fresh air, filling your lungs with it. The sun has risen too and spreading its glow filling you with vitality. Alone on the bench sits a small boy looking lost and subdued. His thin shirt protects him from the wisps of cold air.

You are running and don’t want to stop because you have to take the 8 A.M train to somewhere where you have an important job to do. So you keep running, your mind thinking about the meeting with the group and the presentation you need to deliver. You stop at the last bench. You sit down. Then an image flashes onto your inner eye. An image of a small boy lost in the world having nowhere to go. Your heart strings are pulled. You feel guilty for not doing anything and retrace your steps to find him. He’s gone…You don’t know where. ‘Where did he go?’ You ask. Is he safe? Did someone take care of him or abduct him? You carry on feeling a little disturbed.

That’s because you care! You took more than a moment to realize it and act on it.

You are driving down the road. It’s rush-hour traffic. The acrid smell from the automobiles fills the air. You are sweating with the humidity in the air.

You open the windows hoping some air will flush the heat out. But the air is still. Then a small black arm thrusts itself through the glass windows. The hand is moving around hoping to get your attention. You ignore it but it is persistent, hopeful. Then you slowly pull up the glass window still avoiding looking at the little face with a hungry look, by the side of the car. The traffic moves and the boy disappeared amidst smoke and squealing tires.

You look in the rear view mirror. No sign off him. You wonder where he disappeared. Would some money in his hands have helped him eat something? Would it be snatched by his pimp standing by the road waiting? You drive on. The mind is sufficiently numbed. You turn on the radio, hoping the music will dispel the irritable thoughts. But you had stopped for a moment to think about it. You do care! But the moment was lost in the traffic snarl…

Everyday you find yourself at the crossroads of life. Those moments of truths rear their head but the head is turned away. You care about that moment and think about it but it always end’s up being a tad too late to have an effect. You hope that the next day you wake up and the blue skies and warm weather bring a refreshing change along with a few drops of rain. But it does not. Then you have this realization that if you don’t live in that moment it will disappear and will never come back. So you try harder to stay and make a difference so that every moment is not just an ‘after thought’ but a moment that was rescued because you acted on it. Those little moments added up and made a difference in someone’s life.

Those moments got you late for work but added a golden second to your existing life. You realize that it ‘pays forward’ and soon the entire world is thinking along these lines. A perceptible change is what you notice when you are walking down the street. There is hope for a better world you say to yourself. Many a drops make a mighty ocean and in the ocean of humanity every drop counts.

I mean really, what does it take to carry the spirit of man, his desires and ambitions and at what point does one think one has it all and yet keep trudging along trying to conquer the world- in limited capacities, being pushed over to the limits of randomness and out- through quests that are unwarranted in a constant state of déjà-vu?

Is there a book one can go by without succumbing to ideologies and notions far removed from the impervious brain to the rhythms of human survival and aspirations? Nay! Reaching for the stars and falling short. Surely not wanting to be a ‘hollow one’ but finding oneself at the altar of being sacrificed for what could be reality, when what one wants is the spectrum of a life lived without comprehending in its fullest sense the essence of the word but carrying on through consuming wind-swept deserts and ice-storms all man-made in one’s mind.

Can one just live without being alliterations, sacrificed again by one’s own whims and intuitions and falling off a precipice, that one is fatigued wanting to climb? And when one is dying to believe the ‘what for’ and ‘the purpose of life’; when a wave of skepticism drowned one in its despair, prolonging the journey.

Would the final nail be trounced into the burnished coffin of one’s singing melodies and a sandstorm so cooked up that it got disfigured beyond reason? Would then be the I, catapulted to heights or drowned into the murky rivers of effluence that once swept the city though its underground canals to let be in the oceans, to dilute all those trivialities into one big amalgamated sea of washed up dependencies and fervor?

Can one be done, wanting to quench the thirst and move on to a place that owns me in its calling and protect oneself from the heatstroke’s even if it be an exalted position up there, waiting to be discovered in the wings of lost glory. Perchance, like a cumulus cloud with notions of invincibility and a cloak of defiance but self-sustaining in its endeavors, yet moving on; for fear of looking back and finding nothing following of a worthy cause, not even shadows.

Causeway to fluttering thoughts that had a wing plucked out and dabbled in paints of illustriousness that washed away, dimming its glory with new fangled thoughts, subverting to yesterdays left-over’s in the mind. That once had brimmed over with grandiose images and illusions that rode on the wings of a rainbow, untouched yet beckoning the spirits of yesteryears, to elevate it to a sublime -often mind numbing feelings.

Creativity indeed! Is the ‘I” but a notion in one’s own head, wobbling unsteadily between rhymes and reasons, leaving unfinished the works of the mind flowing down on the pages of a literary novel without an end, beginning or middle? Somewhat slippery in its presentation, held between the dustcover of knowledge and experience that one would owe to an existential randomness, that one cannot often comprehend, leaving it all in a tide pool of insufficient currents.

‘Half a glass full/empty’ is interpreted and analyzed in several ways by all and sundry. I have found it interesting how different people basing on their intellectual stature and emotional attributes have different takes on the same issue. Often times the same situations can appear comic if looked from a different angle and can appear serious and biased when looked at from a different view. Myopic visions add to the confusion. Saints may say that no true seeker has a right to be pessimistic and cautious optimism would be the order of the day. I couldn’t agree more. When I look at the world around me I find the life goes on no matter how immense a tragedy can be in some part of the world over other. Nagasaki and Hiroshima got obliterated in a cloud of toxic smoke but that didn’t stop the world from spinning or from people procreating. On the contrary the world politics took a new dimension.

There is no such thing as a temple of perfection, neither is there the concept of the ‘perfect world’. What was I thinking? Everyone of us have certain convictions that we have reached in our intellects, but if the primary concepts itself are negative and dangerous then a change of thought pattern is warranted to a higher ideal and in all probability this is how revolutionaries arose and preached and those who listened stood to gain. Exaggerated notions of oneself have oftentimes led to a constricted feeling of losing self control I was told. Hitler probably felt that way everyday when he looked at the mirror. He thought himself to be the savior of the world and so also General Pol Pot. Often times I wonder what delusions of exaggerated grandeur did these men harbor? What makes them completely irreverent towards a fellow being to the point that to keep some they were willing to eliminate them in large numbers. How did they justify their actions and live with it? How didn’t it all appear so grossly out of commonplace? The word genocide didn’t leave a dent in their thinking or rationale but garnered support from so many thousands who stood by them thinking that it was all right to do so in the name of ethnic cleansing.

That would bring the topic of spontaneous revelation, beyond the realm of language, beyond the mind and intellect. Contemplative power can apprehend reality they say. A total ‘becoming’…Some great thinker had said, “This intuitive power is nothing other than a mind turned inward and held at attention.”